Target 5 (2 page)

In the mirror he saw Jo coming through the exit, holding
the suitcase. Still watching the man behind the wheel, he
roared out a command which easily reached Jo. 'Stand per
fectly still - if you
want your partners to live ...'

'We're FBI, for God's sake,' the man behind the wheel said in a strained voice.

'That's right, Beaumont...' Dixon choked out the words
as he stayed sprawled on the back seat and hugged his right
wrist with the other hand.

'Prove it!' the Englishman snapped. 'And keep holding
that bag - with both hands,' he shouted to Jo as he watched the third American in the rear-view mirror. Dixon repeated
Beaumont's earlier performance, using his left hand to
extract a card with his fingertips. 'Give me some light so I can see this thing,' Beaumont rasped. He watched the man behind the wheel press a switch and glanced quickly at the
card. 'As phoney as hell,' he said cynically.

'For this you could go behind bars,' the thirty-year-old man behind the wheel informed him tightly.

'On what charge?' Beaumont inquired.

'Resisting Federal officers ...'

'Federal codswallop!' Beaumont stared bleakly at the
man lying on the back seat. 'You come aboard a train and
point a gun in my face when I'm asleep. You don't show me
a shred of damned identification ...'

'It had to be like that, Beaumont,' Dixon said wearily. 'It
had to look good ...'

'I haven't finished yet and I'm not satisfied yet. Since
when did the FBI sport Lincoln Continentals - or have you all become millionaires suddenly?'

'Does the name of General Lemuel Quincey Dawes mean something to you?' Dixon asked. 'And can I show you something else?'

'I think I read the name in the paper once,' Beaumont in
formed him coldly, still holding the Colt pointed at the man behind the wheel, still keeping Jo standing with both hands
clutching his suitcase. 'And you can show me something - if
you're careful.'

The something was a folded sheet of paper which, unfolded and held by Dixon under the light, showed a brief letter written in a weird scrawl he recognized.
Keith - an emergency has come up, a real bad one. I need,you back in Washington fast. As a personal favour. Yours. Lemuel.

'Bugger,' Beaumont said simply. 'I'm not coming - except
in here out of the rain.' He climbed inside the car and settled
back cautiously against the soft leather as Dixon moved over
and seated himself, still holding on to his right hand. 'Is that
busted?' the Englishman inquired. He looked at the
American behind the wheel, who was still twisted round in
his seat, studying Beaumont like a butcher about to carve up
a slaughtered animal.

'You're going to get a crick in your neck,' Beaumont re
marked,

'I'd like to break yours,' the man behind the wheel replied
calmly.

'OK, OK, Fred,' Dixon said irritably. 'But you know,
Beaumont, you did a risky thing there ...'

'Risky?' the Englishman exploded 'You wake me up with a gun in my teeth when my reflexes aren't functioning ...'

'Then I just hope I'm not around when they are
functioning,' Dixon said ruefully as he rubbed at his wrist.
'And I can see your point about the Lincoln Continental -
my car broke down on the way from the airfield and this was
the nearest one we could grab.' In the front seat Fred, who
had turned his back on Beaumont, started the motor.

'He can switch that off,' Beaumont snapped. 'We're not
going anywhere.'

'Switch her off, Fred.' Dixon sounded harassed. 'We're not
going anywhere. Yet,' he added. 'Look, Mr Beaumont,' he
said very politely, 'this was a bad night for us - even before
we met you. We had to fly down from Washington through
an electrical storm - no planes are flying tonight...'

'I know,' Beaumont said crisply as he lit a fresh cigarette, 'I was all set to fly down to Miami when they told me everything was grounded - so I had to take the train.'

'We had one hell of a trip to get to an airfield ahead of the
train,' Dixon went on. 'Then we had to find a car to get us here in time to stop the express. That's how urgently they
want you back in Washington. And another thing - in five years the Florida Express has never made an unscheduled
stop before tonight...'

'We all make an unscheduled stop sometime,' Beaumont replied. 'I'm making one now. And what
was that business
about a break-out from Folsom?'

'It was cover,' Dixon sighed. 'The security on this thing is
tighter than a steel trap. The other passengers will think we took a criminal off the train - just in case someone like that gabby Phillipson decides to contact the press. And I'm still
holding that train,' Dixon added.

'That's your problem. The security on what is tighter
than a steel trap? Dawes tells me less than nothing in his
note.'

'I don't know anything about it .. .'

'Goodnight!' Beaumont opened the door, then slammed it shut again as Dixon said something else. 'We know you've spent two years non-stop in the Arctic, that you were going on holiday, but I was told to tell you as a last resort that Sam Grayson and Horst Langer have agreed to help. I gather you know these men?'

Beaumont sat upright in his seat and stared ahead at the
rain slashing across the windscreen. Dixon watched him
curiously, noting the short nose, the firm mouth, the jawline
which expressed energy and great determination. It was
the eyes which disturbed him most, he thought, the large
brown eyes which looked at a man with an unblinking stare
and seemed to look inside him. The
Englishman took off his
dripping hat, turned his large head and smiled grimly at
Dixon. 'You had a rough trip flying down here?' he
inquired.

'We were all air-sick,'

'Pity. I'm afraid you're going to be air-sick again. I went
through a lot with Grayson and Langer, so I suppose I'll
have to go back to Washington. Let the train go - then get
me to the airfield fast. It sounds as though Dawes has a little
trouble on his hands.' As an afterthought he handed back
the Colt.

At three o'clock in the morning of Saturday, 19 February, lights were still burning on the top floor of the National
Security Agency building in Washington. The NSA, which
is far less well-known to the public than the CIA, is one of
the most effective intelligence-gathering organizations in the
world, partly because it doesn't capture the limelight like its
more notorious counterpart. But it spends more money more
effectively.

General Dawes is a short, heavily-built man of fifty-three
who looks like a company executive. He wears sober, grey
business suits, has a fondness for tropical plants, and he hates
cold weather. Which was probably why he was appointed to
oversee operations in the Arctic zone. At three in the morn
ing on 19 February he was pacing round his office in his shirt-sleeves, sweating a little from the temperature of eighty-three degrees which was kept constant by a sophisticated system of temperature control. Eighty-three degrees
was obligatory to keep the tropical plants which
festooned
his office alive. It was also why less reverent members of his
staff referred to the room as the Jungle Box.

'Beaumont just came in - they're driving him from the
airport now, General. . .'

Jerry Adams, Dawes's assistant, held a lean hand over the mouthpiece of the phone as he went on talking. 'The plane nearly flipped when it landed, but he's OK. Any special instructions? The car bringing him in is on radio . . .'

'Just get him here - fast!'

'He could go to a hotel first, get freshened up,' Adams
pressed. 'It would give us time to chew this around . . .'

'We snatched him off that express,' Dawes growled. 'I know him - he'll be climbing walls already. It won't be easy to persuade him, and it will be a damned sight less easy if we park him - give him time to think. This one I'm rushing him into - so get him here!'

Adams, a thin, studious-looking man of thirty-five, raised
his dark eyebrows in silent disapproval and gave the instruction. He put down the phone and adjusted his rimless
glasses. 'I still don't see why we need this Englishman. The
way I see this thing developing it's a simple operation and we
can do it with our own boys. When we know Gorov is head
ing for Target-5 we send in a plane, it takes him aboard, it
flies him out . . .'

'Simple?' Dawes completed one more circuit round the room with his bouncy walk and sat down behind his large bare desk. 'Simple?' he repeated softly. 'As simple as falling off the Pan-Am building - and you break your neck that way, too.'

'Given a little luck it could be a smooth run . ..'

'A little luck?' Dawes's tone was deceptively quiet. 'You could be right there, Adams,' he went on genially. 'We have an important Russian coming over to us - maybe the most important Russian who ever left the Soviet Union. Agreed?'

'That's true,' Adams said innocently.

'He's going to make a run for it,' Dawes continued in the
same even tone. 'He's starting from the Soviet ice island
North Pole 17,* and he'll run for our nearest research base,
Target-5, which at this moment in time happens to be
twenty-five miles west of the Soviet island. As of now there
are only three professors on Target-5 waiting to be evacu
ated before the island breaks up. Are you with me?' he
inquired.

'All the way, sir ...'

'None of those three professors on Target-5 has any idea of what's going to happen - that Gorov will soon be on his way there over the polar pack.' Dawes was speaking faster
now, holding Adams's gaze with his cold blue eyes. 'We
can't tell them because they haven't got top security
clearance . . .'

'Maybe after all we should radio them,' Adams sug
gested, 'give them a hint...'

'Hint hell! It's only recently we knew Gorov was coming.
I can't send in a planeload of men too soon because that
might alert the Russians. They might seal off their base -which would seal in Gorov. The whole guts of the thing at this stage is that conditions at Target-5
must appear totally
normal and damned quiet.'

'I still don't see where Beaumont comes in.'

Dawes studied Adams before replying. At thirty-five Jerry Adams had more academic
qualifications for his job than Dawes could remember. He was fluent in six languages, including Russian and Serbo-Croat. He was an expert cryptographer, a specialist in radio-communications, and he was reputed to be one of the six best interrogators inside the United States. There was only one Arctic qualification he lacked - the only ice he'd seen had been inside a cocktail shaker.

'Fog,' Dawes said.

*
All major Soviet floating bases in the Arctic are prefixed by the words 'North Pole', followed by a number. The base so named may, in fact, .be drifting hundreds
of miles from the Pole itself.

'Fog?'